The Outlaws (Presidential Agent 6)

Tor thought he would be interviewed, probably in the restaurant or the bar, by a personnel officer of the Gossinger organization. Instead, he was led to the elevator which carried him to a top floor apartment, overlooking the Danube, which apparently occupied that entire corner of the building.

An interior door opened and an enormous dog came out, walked to him, sniffed him, then sat down. Normally, Tor was not afraid of dogs. But this one frightened him. He thought it had to weigh well over fifty kilos. Even when the dog offered his paw, he thought carefully before squatting to take it.

“You come well recommended,” said a voice in Hungarian with a Budapester accent. “Max usually shows his teeth to people he doesn’t like. Often they wet their pants.”

Tor had looked up to see a tall silver-haired man who seemed to be in his sixties standing in the doorway.

“My name is Eric Kocian,” the man said. “Come in. We’ll talk and have a drink.”

He opened the door wide and waved Tor inside a spacious and well-furnished apartment.

Kocian walked to a sideboard and turned, holding a bottle in his hand.

“Wild Turkey Rare Breed all right with you?” he asked.

“I don’t know what it is,” Tor confessed.

“One of the very few things the Americans do superbly is make bourbon whisky. This is one of the better bourbon whiskys. My godson gave me a case for my seventy-seventh birthday.”

Seventy-seventh birthday? Tor had thought. My God, he’s that old?

“Sir, I don’t know. I’m supposed to be interviewed for a job.”

“And so you are. Don’t you drink?”

“Yes, sir. I drink.”

“Good. My experience has been you can’t trust people who don’t.”

Kocian poured him a large, squarish glass half-full of the bourbon whisky.

“This is what they call ‘sipping whisky.’ But if you want water and ice ...”

Kocian pointed to the sideboard.

“This is fine, thank you,” Tor said.

“May I ask about your wife? How is she?”

How does he know about my Margo?

“Not very well, I’m afraid.”

Kocian waved him into a leather-upholstered armchair and seated himself in an identical chair facing it.

“If you decide to take this position,” Kocian announced, “she will be covered under our medical care program. Most German physicians are insufferably arrogant, and tend to regard their patients as laboratory specimens, but they seem to know what they’re doing. Maybe they’ll have answers you haven’t been able to find here.”

“Am I being offered the position?” Tor asked, on the cusp of incredulity.

“I have one or two other quick questions first,” Kocian said.

“Quick questions? But you don’t know anything about me.”

“I know just about everything about you that interests me,” Kocian said. “Are you still on the CIA’s payroll?”

“I was never on their payroll,” Tor said.

“That’s not what I have been led to understand.”